Phantoms
by jeckel-hyde14
Summary: Edmund reflects on one of the changes brought on by returning to England.


Disclaimer: Chronicles of Narnia do not belong to me.

***Phantoms***

It gave me quite a shock, the way my body looked after I left Narnia. Should I tell Susan this; she would simply assume that I miss my height. Lucy would think that my lack of muscle mass is the problem. Only Peter would understand.

The crest of my left shoulder was smooth. Silky, lily-pale skin stretched easily over the bone. There ought to have been a red-purple splotch the size of an apple on it. I'd gotten that mark from a skirmish on the Calormene-Narnian border. I'd been fighting one of the nameless, faceless soldiers, trying to dodge every stroke of the flashing scimitar and trying to land a hit or two of my own. I hadn't been paying attention and I knocked into one of the wall torches. Oddly enough, it was actually easier to beat the soldier with my arm on fire.

Absent too was the jagged line that used to draw the flesh on my left calf to a seam. That one I received when I got a tad too mouthy while riding Phillip. It's rather embarrassing, to be honest. He bucked and I went flying across the whole of a clearing. I landed alright and could have walked away if I hadn't tripped on a root while getting up and gone down again, that time landing on a sharp rock.

The rope burns that were meant to be on my wrists had vanished. The loss of those struck something inside of me. Those were the only two scars that Peter and I shared. Pirates had captured the two of us while we were out sailing just off the coast of Cair Paravel. We were rescued, of course, but not before we'd been held prisoner for several days. Come to think of it, there are some missing scars on my back from that incident.

The streaked scar on my right forearm, a remnant of a late-night emergency study session when I knocked over the candle I was reading by, had faded back to young, pale flesh. I no longer had a point to grasp, to calm myself, during times of worry for my family. A diplomat must never show true emotion. All traces must be confined to those uncontrollable urges and tics that all people possess.

It seemed almost odd, once I realized that most, if not all, of them were gone, to discover exactly how many nervous tics centered on marks that no longer existed. It no longer made any sense to massage my right thigh (the site of a werewolf's claw-scars) during rainstorms. There was no reason to rub my thumb and forefinger together, because there was no scar on the pad of my thumb from the only time I mishandled a dagger out of carelessness. There was no way to physically remind myself of the necessity of caution during a delicate procedure.

Literally hundreds of tiny scars were washed away from my hands, arms, feet, and legs. All of them, whether they were from sword training, accidents in quill-sharpening, or romps in the woods, were gone.

Stretch marks from my first adolescence… wiped clean. Red and shiny burns… gone. Leavings of accidental cliff diving… absent. Marks left from battle wounds left unattended, by necessity, until infection set in… disappeared.

It was almost as if I'd never lived beyond my first ten years. That hurt. By the Lion, it hurt!

For a long time I avoided looking at my stomach. The Witch-scar. It hurt to think that it was erased as easily as the others, but it hurt more to think that it might have remained. Either way, finally looking at it stung.

It was gone. The silvery puckered stab-scar was gone. I remember just staring for a few minutes at my abdomen. My skin was soft and smooth and so very _young_ that it hardly seemed to be mine.

They were all gone.

And yet…they weren't.

As the weeks and months passed, I began to notice my scars again. They never became visible, but I felt them. They were like shimmering phantoms drifting and slipping under my skin. Every so often one of those phantoms gave a twinge, like they were trying to remind me of their existence. I accepted this. I was simply grateful not to have to explain to Mum where all of my scars came from.

All was well for a time. Then, on the night of the first frost, my abdomen burst into icy flame. The place where my stab wound had been ached and cramped. Slivers of ice burrowed their way through the skin, through the muscle, into my very core. I hid the pain easily from Mum and Dad. They were distracted enough as it was, dealing with Dad's war injuries. Peter, Susan, and Lucy weren't fooled.

They tried for days to get me to confess the source of my pain. Eventually I gave in. They were properly horrified. I never quite understood why. I knew and they sensed what would happen. At the first sign of spring, the pain left, as swiftly as it had appeared. I told my royal siblings this at once and they relaxed for the first time in months.

The same thing happened the next winter and has happened during every winter since. My siblings have learned to remain calm. Susan even seems to forget, sometimes, why I feel the pain. It is odd, but I suppose all four of us gave up the right to be normal a long time ago.

Lucy, while she has never stopped hoping to return to Narnia, has found her niche in England and lives as normally as possible. Susan has grown up a bit, almost too much too fast, but that's Susan for you, and has become quite the social butterfly. Peter remains as stoic as he has been from the first day back in England.

Lucy would feel sorry and worried for me, should I explain fully. Susan would try, in some fashion, to heal me. Peter, alone, would understand.

But I will never tell them.


End file.
